thebeast

Giant Bomb Unplugged, a.k.a TheBeast's Introduction to Board Games is a blog series intended to introduce the Giant Bomb community to board gaming. I'll try to introduce a couple of games in every edition, hopefully there'll be something that interests you somewhere. Enjoy!

You’ve played Monopoly. You’ve experienced the seven hour campaign to take over Mayfair, that one perfectly nice person that turns in to a raging lunatic when confronted with the opportunity to deprive you of fake money, and the moment the game ends when your dog decides the only way to return some civility to the group is to go Godzilla on your Chance cards.

Chances are, you’ve not played a board game since then. Video games are way better anyway, right? Why mess about with cardboard and plastic when you can get way more engaging content on your TV screen? If all you’ve ever played is Monopoly, then I forgive you, that opinion is probably warranted.

The reality is, there’s a whole load of board games out there that are just as engaging, interesting and more social than any video game - and you owe it to yourself to tear yourself away from your TV for a few hours, crack open a few beers and sit around with your friends/family and give them a go. Here’s a few you might want to start with.

Ticket to Ride

Designer: Alan R. Moon, Publisher: Days of Wonder

This is one you might have heard of before; perhaps from a past TNT, from the Tested crew or otherwise, unsurprising considering this is one of the most popular modern board games around.

Having been dealt a set of Destination Tickets at the start of the game, your goal in Ticket to Ride is to place your own-coloured trains so that they create a link between the cities shown on your tickets. Your opponents are trying to do the same (with their own set of tickets) - if you’re keeping an eye on them, you might be able to guess where they’re going next and foil their plans.

Playing trains requires revealing a set of coloured cards that match the section of track you’re playing to, so you’ll need to be building up a good hand of cards as you play, deciding which cards you’re going to need both now and later.

All you ever need to do on your turn is one of three things; draw a new coloured card, place a new train section, or draw some new Destination Tickets - making Ticket to Ride an extremely easy game to pick up and teach. That doesn’t mean it’s simple though; there’s a whole wealth of strategic choices to make, and a different combination of Destination Tickets every time to keep things varied.

Recommended Versions/Expansions: You US people might prefer to pick up the original Ticket to Ride as you’ll probably recognise all the locations. I personally prefer Ticket to Ride: Europe because it adds a few twists to the base game that make things a little more varied. There’s a few other versions and expansions around if you’re interested too, but I’d recommend sticking with the original or Europe to start with.

Players: Between 2 and 5 players. I usually play with 2, which makes for a relatively easy-going game without much conflict that’s more about out-planning your opponent. With 4 and 5 players, you’ll have a very competitive game with lots of conflict where trying to block your opponents becomes a much more valuable tactic.

Recommended for: Ticket to Ride doesn’t really require much of an investment in the theme; it’s very lighthearted and easy to get in to, so you don’t need to be a train nerd or a strategy enthusiast to enjoy it. It’s the sort of game you can break out on a night in with your friends/family and show them how to play in minutes.

Dominion

Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino, Publisher: Rio Grande Games

Another game you might have heard mention of from the Tested crew, Dominion is a so-called deck-building game in which you build up your own deck of cards representing your Dominion. The player with the most valuable deck (most Victory Points) at the end of the game is the winner.

You’ll start the game with a few cards representing money and a few Estates (the lowest value land card you can own - land is the main way to earn Victory Points). On your turn, you draw 5 cards from your deck and play out your turn. Usually, this will involve purchasing a card from the Kingdom decks - 10 different decks laid out on the table in front of all players. The base game includes 25 Kingdom decks, from which 10 are selected for each game (that makes something like 2.3 million possible combinations).

Each Kindgom card has a cost, as well as some associated action. This action, when pulled in to your hand from your deck, can be used to perform a whole load of different things, from attacking your opponents, through obtaining new and better cards, to improving your chances on later turns. As you build up money (you buy this too), you’ll be able to afford better Kingdom cards and better land cards.Once 3 of the Kingdom decks are depleted, or all of the most expensive land cards (Provinces) have been bought up, the game ends. Each player counts the Victory Points in their deck and the winner is declared.

Dominion is an exceptionally simple game to grasp, but with the variety of Kingdom cards available, you’re never likely to have the same game twice. Each combination requires different strategy, different thinking and a different approach - some cards can even change the way scoring works at the end of the game.Recommended Versions/Expansions: If you’re just looking to get started with Dominion, you can either get the base Dominion game, or Dominion: Intrigue; both of which come with all the cards you need - the latter just has different Kingdom cards and can also be used as an expansion. I’d suggest the original Dominion, just because it’s a good starting point.

Once you get addicted, you have 5 expansions (with one more coming this month) to keep you busy - each offering between 12 and 25 new Kingdom cards to throw in the mix (that should give you around 1 quadrillion, 360 trillion, 705 billion, something something combinations of cards to try out), as well as new game mechanic to keep things interesting.

Players: Between 2 and 4 players with the base game, Intrigue adds enough cards to go up to 6. This game is a blast with 2 to 4 players, offering loads of interactivity and lots of variation.

Recommended for: Everyone I’ve introduced this game to has become quickly addicted, and although the theme doesn’t seem that interesting at a glance - everyone quickly looks past it. The cards have enough variety that you never feel stuck in a dull medieval style game. Highly recommended to absolutely everyone.

Thanks for reading - I hope you find something of interest here. I'm hoping to write some more of these if there's enough interest, so reply, let me know what you think and I'll keep doing them.

Thanks to various BoardGameGeek users for the pictures.

This can be discussed over in this existing thread.

@Kaiven: Just a note for the future; take a look at our YouTube spam rules and try not to post videos without much extra commentary. I'm not going to lock this because there's probably not much else you can say about a Super Meat Boy speed run, but you get the idea.

This isn't going anywhere.

Locked at Ahmad_Metallica's request.

I've not been playing enough games this week; just lots of Tiny Tower and Puzzle Agent on iPad, and watching the other half play through Shenmue. Damn I'm becoming a 'casual' gamer, send help!

Don't worry too much about the naysayers, the majority have never owned a Mac.

The choice is entirely based on how portable you want really; but a few points to help you mac your decision:

• The latest iMacs (only a couple of months old) are pretty damn fast. The sandy bridge i5/i7s are really speedy, and with the OS optimised for them, it'll probably be quicker than anything you've seen. Games run pretty well too, Source games, WoW, Starcraft, etc.
• MacBooks are due for a refresh soon (with sandy bridge CPUs I assume) - they're not as powerful as the iMacs and generally have poorer graphics cards (unless you go for the more expensive models with the dual cards).

Seeing as you say you won't use it as a portable device very much, and you have a smartphone, I'd go with the iMac - you get a powerful computer with a great screen at a pretty decent price.

Great idea for a feature!

SID remixes are my staple work background music; particularly on SLAY Radio. There's some pretty good Mutants remixes around too.

Nice visually, but absolutely baffling (to me) for browsing. These new designs have a strange aversion to putting dates on things, which seems a bit strange for such time-based content. I can't quickly scan for all news that's been posted since I checked yesterday, for example.

Every time I say the name I can't help but think of the communicator sound from the original Star Trek series; weee-ooo.